“On the house,” she said.
I thanked her a few times and then headed for the door. As it jangled, Kathleen called out, “Haley?”
One of my feet was on the sidewalk and the brisk February air had already hit my face.
“Yeah?”
“It’s not in your head,” Kathleen said. “Or rather…not just in your head. It’s real. There’s something real happening in that building. I felt it…before you were even born. Remember that.”
“Okay,” I said, then let the door close behind me.
25
I was alone in my room—about a half hour before curfew—when Kathleen’s scans arrived.
REPORT: WINDHAM-FARNSWOOD ACADEMY CONSULTATION
INTRODUCTION
My first contact with Ms. Elizabeth “Betty” Bradford, headmistress of the Windham School, the all-female half of the larger Windham-Farnswood Academy, was in August 1985. In her initial call, she explained that she had read some of my research and comments in a publication about the Tina Resch poltergeist case, and asked if I would be open to being a consultant for her school, which has been experiencing potentially paranormal activity for many years. The site of the activity is the Dearborn dormitory, occupied currently only by senior students. The building was erected in 1879, and has always been a student dormitory—although in the first few decades, it housed students of all grades.
Mrs. Bradford was clearly versed in the Resch case as well as other publicized paranormal cases from recent decades (Amityville house, Lindley Street poltergeist, etc.). She shared that she was attracted to my “open-minded approach” (her words) to paranormal activity (in particular that I’ve studied mass hysteria and mass delusion as well as paranormal phenomena), and that I always work alongside my female consultant (that is, my wife Kathleen). She asked if either of us had experience working with teenagers, and was interested to hear that Kathleen had worked as a camp counselor throughout her summers in college and has occasionally substitute-taught when we aren’t traveling for consultations. One week after our initial conversation, Mrs. Bradford contacted us again to propose a long-term contract consultation.
She asked that, if agreed upon, the terms of our consultation be absolutely confidential, no matter what the findings or outcomes, and never be referenced in any future CVs or media engagements. Pseudonyms would be used for our residency at Dearborn Hall, so the wider school community would not be aware of our history as paranormal investigators. She offered a generous compensation that included full room and board at the academy for the months of January–June 1986.
Mrs. Bradford had us sign two separate contracts—one for our official employment as houseparents, the other for our paranormal-parapsychological consultation. My understanding is that the former was submitted as part of the school’s general budget and the latter kept in her personal files to ensure against any breach of the strict terms of that contract. It is also my understanding that we are receiving the standard houseparenting stipend from the Windham-Farnswood HR department, but the additional, confidential paranormal consult compensation is being paid by Mrs. Bradford herself. Copies of both contracts are included herein.
Mrs. Bradford explained to us at the outset that Dearborn Hall has had a long history of paranormal phenomena—or at least the perception of paranormal phenomena—throughout her long personal history with the school and the dorm. She was a student at the academy in the late 1930s, and her mother attended from 1905–09. While Mrs. Bradford herself never experienced a haunting, a friend of hers did. She saw the young ghost girl in her doorway, and said she uttered words to her that were mostly inaudible, but for the two words “sick heart.” Unfortunately, that friend of Mrs. Bradford’s is now deceased. Mrs. Bradford says that she recalls that in the 1930s her friend and their peers referred to the ghost as Sarah or occasionally Sarah in Black, at times shortened to Sarah Black. She was said to appear in the upper hallways in black clothing, although Mrs. Bradford says she cannot recall if her friend confirmed that detail when she experienced an actual sighting. Most reports of sightings, according to Mrs. Bradford’s recollection, are of a pale, petite, undernourished-looking young woman.
I paused in my reading, lingering on the words “sick heart.” Like a broken heart, perhaps? Like I had suggested to Suzie Price? Maybe. She had claimed someone had heard “sad heart,” which wasn’t all that different. But sick heart sounded more sinister.
Glancing around the room, I missed Star’s cheerful presence. Her mobile of delicate paper umbrellas revolved slowly, as always, above her bed. Her beluga smirked at me from behind it.
Mrs. Bradford claims that she reported her friend’s sighting to her mother, who admitted she had heard rumors of similar encounters in her day, but made it clear that she didn’t think her daughter should engage in study of—or even discussions of—the occult. “My mother was very religious and traditional. She didn’t care to talk about such things.” Mrs. Bradford recollects that her mother said that the ghost was, in her student days, rumored to quote Scripture during her visitations. But she believes that may have been her mother’s pious embellishment of a topic that otherwise made her uncomfortable.
Nonetheless, Mrs. Bradford maintains a personal curiosity about paranormal phenomena, and confesses a rekindled interest in the Dearborn ghost when she’d still hear students mention it in the 1950s, when she came back to her alma mater to teach history for three years. After that, Mrs. Bradford taught at a small college for many years, and didn’t return to Windham until she was tapped to be headmistress of the school in 1982.
“I wasn’t terribly surprised to discover that the ghost girl had stayed on all that time. Windies are nothing if not tenacious. And I have to assume the ghost is a Windy.”
Mrs. Bradford explains that disturbances don’t occur every year. Sometimes they’re minor, e.g., noises or drafts, but every few years, or at least once a decade, it seems—there are more serious incidents, with more serious consequences.
Last year was one such year.
A senior student and Dearborn resident, who will hereby be referred to as Student X, was hospitalized in February after displaying symptoms of mental distress for several weeks. As I am not a mental health professional and have not seen this young woman’s medical records, I cannot describe her condition in detail here. I am limited to what Mrs. Bradford reported to me, which was thus: The student refused to sleep in her own room, and was often found in the early mornings sleeping in her sleeping bag on the common area couches. When threatened with administrative consequences, she began sleeping in out-of-the-way places in the building in which she was not likely to be caught, such as the floors of other students’ rooms, and, when that wasn’t possible (apparently her friends got tired of her insistence on keeping the lights on), the kitchen storage room on the ground floor. When asked why she wouldn’t stay in her room, Student X would repeatedly say, “I have to sleep where she can’t see me.”
Student X’s grandparents are generous donors to the school. Mrs. Bradford explained that the administration delayed action on this problem in order to avoid upsetting a legacy family. But when the student’s sleeping habits began to affect her performance in classes (she was starting to fail several), as well as the housemother’s observance of her eating poorly and growing thinner, action had to be taken. The student was taken into the infirmary, and the nurse there, feeling the student’s condition beyond her treatment capabilities, recommended hospitalization, to which the student’s family agreed reluctantly. After a hospitalization of about two months, the student was allowed to complete her coursework and exams through a tutor at home, and eventually earned her Windham-Farnswood diploma.
Mrs. Bradford’s proposal was that we come to Dearborn as temporary houseparents. We agreed that my and Kathleen’s initial role should be that of observers.
“Damn,” I breathed as I came to the end of
the introduction. Eccentric old headmistress Betty Bradford had hired an undercover ghost hunter to study Dearborn and its students. Was that legal? I wondered. But more importantly, it confirmed not only that there were school administrators who believed that something was wrong in the building—but also that the place had rumors of hauntings potentially as far back as 1905.
And Student X’s troubles seemed to resemble Taylor’s before her death. The recording of the whispers, for one. But also Anthony’s suggestion that she was looking for ways to avoid sleeping in her room.
I glanced at the time. Ten minutes to curfew. Maybe Star was back in the building and had decided to hang out in someone else’s room.
“Oh!” I muttered to myself, suddenly remembering that I was supposed to call Lily Bruno—and that privacy would be best for that. Better to do it before Star returned. I quickly took out my phone and tapped Lily’s number.
No answer—which didn’t really surprise me.
I tossed my phone on my bed and returned to my file, scrolling through. It had several more sections, with headings like Arrival and First Days, Impression, Logged Events, Relevant Historical Background, Student Interviews, Student X, Student Y.
Student Interviews was by far the longest part. I glanced over the summary at the top.
Student interviews were conducted informally, and transcribed in summary/from recollections, not recorded or transcribed verbatim. There were 84 senior students living in the hall, but meaningful interviews were not possible with every student since a systematic interview process was not possible with the confidential nature of our role/study, as prescribed by our client. Informal interviews/discussions were conducted with 52 students.
2 reported recent experiences that they describe explicitly as paranormal.
1 reported an experience that her peers think was of a paranormal nature but she does not.
8 discussed the details of Student X’s mental breakdown as they had heard them and/or theorized about the cause of this incident.
7 reported second- or thirdhand accounts of paranormal activity in the dormitory in previous years—4 of a poltergeist-type description, 3 more distinctly a spirit entity.
3 appear to show signs of possible mental distress, although no formal clinical assessment has been made.
All students interviewed had known of the dorm’s reputation as a haunted place before residing there, and all had heard of “Sarah” throughout their earlier years at the school. Roughly half claim belief that there might be some truth to the stories.
Students X and Y have been given letter designations and are addressed in their own portions of the report, due to the special nature of their cases. They are not among the numbered interviewees.
I stopped here to take a breath. Closing my eyes, I thought guiltily of my abandoned correspondence with Taylor’s brother, Thatcher. If I were to write him right now, what would I say?
Dear Thatcher,
I am still not sure who or what was whispering to your sister in that video. But it’s looking more and more like there’s some sort of paranormal problem here. Taylor was apparently not the first girl to lose her shit in this dorm. In fact, it was happening before she was even born, and lots of people seem to know about it…
The door squeaked and I opened my eyes as Star strode in, smiling as she tore off her red wool coat.
“It’s official!” she said.
“What’s official?”
“Mark and I are together.”
I dragged my gaze off my laptop screen. “Mark who?”
“Mark Byrne.” Star grinned.
“Oh. I think I know who he is. Plays baseball? Does he have brown hair and sideburns?”
“Yep. That’s the one.”
“I didn’t know you were a sideburn girl,” I said.
Star made a little claw with her hand, and a growling noise in her throat—I guess to indicate that sideburns drove her wild.
“Uhh…congratulations? I didn’t know this was going on.”
“Oh…there’s a lot people don’t know about me.”
There was still a goony smile on Star’s face. I decided not to ask if she’d had a drink or two. I glanced at my laptop, debating whether I should share this stunning cache of dark campus history. I decided against it, not wanting to steal her thunder. And Star was in rare form right now. Maybe, for once, she didn’t want to talk about long-dead Windham girls.
My phone chirped for attention.
Sorry to miss your call, Lily Bruno had texted. I’m out with friends right now. Try in the morning? I don’t have anything going on.
“Me too,” I said absently.
I congratulated Star again and then went back to Kathleen’s files.
* * *
I was still reading after Star had turned in and fallen asleep. She’d offered to use her sleep mask, but I had told her I didn’t mind reading in the dark if she didn’t mind the computer glare.
At first, I started with the section called Student Interviews.
They were kind of boring—because as Darkins had pointed out, they didn’t amount to much. One was a lengthy interview in which a student who didn’t know Student X speculated at length about her having multiple personalities. The student had just read the book Sybil. Another said that she heard of a girl a few years ago who kept feeling a cold hand on her in the night. But it was a thirdhand story.
Most of the girls had simply heard the same things about the Winter Girl over their years at Windham that I had: that her name might be Sarah. That she haunted in January or February. That she knocked on doors or could be seen in a white nightgown in the hallway if you got up and ventured to the bathroom after midnight. That she was to blame for the various weird noises in the building on winter nights. That she had been spurned by a young man and killed herself in her room. One girl said something I hadn’t heard before, though: Some girls say that she’s looking for her replacement. That she’s tired of being a ghost, that she’ll strangle or smother you in your bed if you’re not careful. And then you’re the ghost.
I stared at that line for a moment, then read on. When asked where she’d heard that, the girl said her older sister had told her, when she was a freshman and her sister was a senior. Since it sounded like the sort of thing an older sister would say to freak out a sibling, I decided to try not to worry much about it, for now.
I skipped over some of the interviews to the parts called Student X and Student Y:
STUDENT X
As Student X wishes for her story to remain confidential, she spoke to us by phone on the condition of anonymity. Her words are reported here verbatim, with her permission. (X is Student X and Darkins, D, is myself.)
X: It started with the whispering.
I felt my breath catch at this, but continued reading:
It came from somewhere in my room. Two different nights. It was a female voice. After a couple of nights it went away, and I felt like I must have been dreaming.
D: Can you tell us what she was saying? The female voice?
X: The first time, she said, “I see you when the lights go out.” The next time, I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I think I heard the name “Samuel,” but it was too soft to really say for sure.
My eyes blurred for a moment, and my heart jumped.
Samuel. Like Taylor’s Samuel. It was a real thing. Student X had heard the same damn thing that Anthony and I had heard. And that presumably Taylor had heard.
Same ghost. Thirty years ago. Or a different but similar ghost? Who had selected Taylor as her replacement?
I was shaking. I wanted to turn on a light to calm my nerves. But I didn’t want to wake up Star. I reread the lines and then kept reading:
X: The first time, she said, “I see you when the lights go out.” The next time, I co
uldn’t hear what she was saying. I think I heard the name “Samuel,” but it was too soft to really say for sure.
I was too terrified to really listen, since I was jumping up and turning on the light, and then left the room. But just as soon as I thought it was going to be over, I heard it again. A week or so later. And I think it was two or three nights of silence after that. Just enough for me to be tricked into thinking I could relax. And then I saw her in my doorway. While I was sleeping.
D: Was your door open or closed?
X: Closed. A sort of sound woke me up, like someone taking a breath, and there she was.
D: Did she speak?
X: No.
D: Did she appear to see you? Make eye contact with you? Gesture at you in any way?
X: I cried out, I think. And hid under the covers for a second. And there was a knocking sound on my door, then on my window. It was terrifying, like everything was coming apart. And when it stopped, she was gone.
D: What did she look like?
X: Sad. Long face. Like a horsey face, kind of. You know how some girls sometimes look like horses?
I paused here without knowing quite why. Of all of the strange things that Student X had said, this struck me as particularly curious—that she would assess the attractiveness of a ghost’s face.
D: I suppose. Do you remember anything else about how she looked?
X: Not really.
D: Her hair…her face…what she wore?
X: Oh. She wore white.
D: So let’s go back to her looking sad. Not angry?
X: I don’t remember. Empty, blank, but sad.
D: Okay. So why did you decide to start sleeping in other rooms?
X: Wouldn’t you?
D: Hard to say. But yes, I’m sure I’d have my reservations about it.
When All the Girls Are Sleeping Page 15